by H. E. Bates
Below me was the farmhouse and beyond it the village and farther beyond were the hills I had crossed the day before. The air was so clear and still that I could see a man, far off, walking in a half-mown oat field with a white dog at his heels. I was watching him, feeling that he and I and the dog were alone in that vast expanse of sun-washed land when a voice hailed me, blustering:
‘You know you’re trespassing?’
I turned. Leaning on the field gate a man of forty-five or so, red, heavy-jawed, sullen, in dirty tweeds and a greasy felt hat, with a gun under his arm, was regarding me with exaggerated hostility, scowling, his loose red underlip curled open, as though to frighten me. I looked at him in silence, trying to frame a reply in my mind.
‘D’ye hear me?’ he shouted, incensed. ‘You’re trespassing.’
I began to walk towards him. ‘There’s no law against trespassing,’ I said.
‘None o’ your cheek!’ He lifted his gun, as though to intimidate me. ‘Who d’ye think you’re talking to, eh? Eh?’
I didn’t answer. He spat in sudden anger.
‘I say who d’ye think you’re talking to, eh?’ he shouted. ‘What the bleeding ’ell are you doing up here? Didn’t you hear me say you were trespassing?’
I was angry. ‘How do I know you’re not trespassing yourself?’ I said.
My words maddened him. I could see his temper colour his face an even darker, dirtier red as he climbed the gate and blundered across the grass, his body waddling a little on its slightly bowed legs, his long arms swinging loosely at his knees, like an ape’s. He was very tall but his shoulders were weak and rounded, and as he came nearer I could see his whole body trembling with a kind of nervous depravity. He might have been drunk. His eyes, narrow and washed-out, were servile and weak. He came towards me puffing out his cheeks and snapping his jaw soundlessly open and shut.
We stood for a moment facing each other, I looking at his face, he staring me up and down until at last he saw the flowers in my hand.
‘Flowers,’ he sneered slowly.
‘And what’s that to do with you?’
‘What’s it to do with me?’ he half shouted. ‘What’s it to do with me, eh? I’ll bloody well show you what’s to do with me. Any more of your bleeding cheek and I’ll drop you one! See? You clear off while your shoes are good.’
‘I’ll go when I’m ready.’
‘You’ll go when I tell you to! I own this bloody land.’
‘How do I know that?’
‘How do you know that? How do you know that, eh? I’ll bloody soon show you. Here, see that? Eh?’ He held out his gun. ‘See that?’
He ran one finger along the breech of the gun and I saw his name engraved in beautiful flowing letters on the steel.
‘Read that!’ he said. ‘Abel Skinner. See? Well, that’s me.’
‘Is that your house?’ I pointed to the farmhouse in the hollow below us. I remembered his name on the envelope.
‘My house and my land all the way up the hill. Satisfied?’
For a moment I hesitated about telling him of the note, but finally I told him.
‘Took a note?’ he said. ‘Took a note? Who from?’
‘Miss Jefferson.’
‘None o’ your bloody sauce. What d’ye mean, eh?’
I began to explain, and as I was speaking a curious change came over him. He quietened down. By degrees he concealed his anger with me. He lost his aggressiveness. But all the time he kept looking at me uncertainly, in doubt as to what attitude to adopt.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he muttered at last. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ His voice was half-apologetic, half-grousing.
‘I put the note under the door,’ I said. ‘There didn’t seem to be anyone about. Was that all right?’
‘All right, all right,’ he muttered.
‘If you’ll tell me where the footpath is I’ll take it and go on.’
‘Go on?’ he said. ‘Where you going?’ It was the old half-menacing tone.
‘I’m out for the day.’
‘Well, you can’t go on here. I don’t allow it! I don’t allow nobody up here. I got traps and things set. I don’t want nobody interfering.’
‘All right. I’ll go back.’
He became half-apologetic in an instant again.
‘That’s all right. That’s all right.’
And then – ‘It’s bleeding hot. Drink wouldn’t be in your line, would it?’
‘Why not?’
‘Better come down with me and have a wet at the house. You can come up again by the cart-track. It goes right along the hill there.’
I hesitated. I wanted to go straight on, alone, along the hot bare spine of the hill. He saw my hesitation.
‘Too proud,’ I heard him mutter.
Without a word I followed him down the hill.
We struck across the burnt grassland diagonally and climbed the fence into a field of barley and walked down the slope of the unploughed headland. Once he stopped and bent down and plucked off a barley ear and muttering something put the straw into his mouth. At the end of the headland he halted, took the straw out of his mouth, spat and remarked:
‘Might cut it if the weather lasts.’
By the very tone of his voice, careless and a little cynical, I knew that he did not mean it. When I said nothing he looked at me cunningly, his mouth askew, half-smiling, and I felt that he knew that I knew. The field was a wilderness. Thistles and knapweed and great docks like sprays of burnt meadowsweet had strangled and dwarfed the barley. The whitening stalks were thin and starved. If they were reaped the sheaves would stand no higher than a child.
He must have known what I was thinking. ‘No bleeding money in corn nowadays.’
And later, as we went on, out of the barley field and down a cart-track under a row of wych-elms: ‘No bleeding money in anything.’
On a low branch of a wych-elm I saw a string of dead stoats, a few weasels, a jay or two and a line of magpies, quivering with white maggots and giving off a faint stench in the warm air.
‘That’s the trouble in this farm,’ he said, pointing up. ‘Pests. Alive with ’em. Time you’re done contending with pests there’s no time for nothing. The money I waste on shooting the damn things and laying traps! You wouldn’t credit it. You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t credit it.’
Suddenly, in a spasm of anger, he stopped in the track, spat, lifted the gun to his shoulder, and blazed at the strung-up birds and animals. He shot in a frenzy of pleasure and hatred, his face flushed, his jaw working up and down with excitement. Now and then, as though he were actually killing them, he shouted up at the half-shattered carcasses: ‘Go’n down, you sods; go’n down, you sods!’ In the act of reloading his rifle he suddenly stopped, spat and swore with vague mutterings.
‘Better leave ’em,’ he said to me. ‘Example – warning to the rest. Blast ’em!’
We walked on. He turned to me with sudden anger. ‘And that’s how it is in this farm. Fast as you slave some bleeding thing takes and puts its spoke in. I’m slaving day and night in this place, day and night, and never see nothing for it. Never see nothing for it. Never shall. Never have done.’
As he was raging we left the track through a gate and walked down the dry bare headland of the last field before the farm. Looking across the rough sunbaked acres of seeding dock and thistle and yellowing twitch I asked him if it were fallow.
‘Foller?’ he half-shouted. ‘Foller! You’ll get foller. That’s winter cabbage! Winter bloody cabbage – that’s what that should ha’ been. And not a bleeding plant left, not a leaf!’
‘Rabbits?’ I said.
‘You’re right for once. Right for once, damn me if you ain’t.’
‘Why don’t you wire in?’ I said.
‘Wire in?’ he cried. ‘You mean wire-netting? All round a fifteen-acre field? I should like. I should like.’
‘Wouldn’t it pay?’
‘Pay?’ he cried. ‘Pay? Nothing pays on this pla
ce. If the rabbits didn’t do it there’d be the flea and the caterpillar or some other damn thing. Even if I had the money to do it with it wouldn’t pay. And I ain’t got the money, so it’s no use talking. No use talking.’
In his excitement and disgust he began to hurry and by the time we had reached the farmyard his face was oily with sweat and his tongue was constantly licking his loose red lips. The farmyard was still deserted and the hot sunlight pouring down on the dilapidated barns and wagons and the house itself seemed to intensify the silence and emptiness of the place.
At the front door he took a key from his pocket, snapped it in the lock and kicked the door open with his foot.
‘Come in,’ he said, stepping across the threshold.
‘You’ve got your foot on the letter,’ I said.
‘Letter? What letter?’ He looked down at his feet. ‘Ah yes, yes. Damn it, damn it.’ Stooping, he picked the letter up. His boot had left its dirty imprint across the handwriting. He wiped the envelope on his breeches.
‘She said there was no answer,’ I remarked.
In a flash he looked up at me, suspicious, and then, evidently reassured, muttered ‘All right, all right. That’s all right.’
A moment later I could see that he had changed again. As he invited me in for the second time his manner was subdued, apologetic, almost humble. He kept wiping the letter on his breeches, as though in contrition. He was a different man.
After the walk down the hillside in the hot sunshine the house struck damp and cool as a cellar. From the front door I followed him along the passage into a room at the back of the house. There was a damp, stale, shut-up odour about everything, an odour of rotting boards and wallpaper, of disuse and decay, with a whiff sometimes of sour milk and dung. In the room, bare-bricked like the passage, stood a dirty deal table, three or four broken chairs, a bureau littered with papers and half a candle stuck to the desk by its own crinkled grease. On the top of a great black cooking range, rusty and sour with old food-stains and patches of burnt grease where pots had boiled over, stood half a dozen black saucepans, a frying-pan yellow inside with cold bacon-fat, and a big tea-pot with a rubber spout. On the hearth lay a hazel faggot and a billhook and a shovel of coal. The window looked on to the back farm-buildings. I could see a straw-stack and a cattle hovel, thatched with rushes, under which stood an old hay drag and a broken wagon painted blue, with the name A. Skinner in darker scrolled letters on the front board. Beyond the farm the hills rose up again, bare and parched in the strong sunlight.
Mr. Skinner spat into the empty fireplace of the range and then went to a cupboard in the wall by the window and opened it. He had hung his shotgun carefully, almost reverently, on a gun-rack in the passage.
‘Ah now,’ he said. ‘Ah now.’ He licked his lips, from sheer force of habit, each time he spoke. ‘Beer, cider, whisky, wine – what’d you like? What’d you like? Glass of whisky? I’m going to have a glass o’ whisky.’ He reached for a tumbler. ‘Perhaps you’d rather have beer? Eh? I’m going to have a glass o’ whisky.’
‘Did you say wine?’
‘Yes, anything, anything. Like a tot o’ sherry? I’m going to have a glass o’ whisky. You have what you like. You have what you like.’
He was already gulping down his whisky when I asked him to give me sherry. He set down his glass with a great ‘Ah!’ of fierce satisfaction. ‘You’ll have sherry? Half a minute, half a minute.’ He finished his whisky, reached up to the cupboard for another tumbler, poured himself a fresh glass of whisky and then remembered the sherry and poured out that too.
‘Not a tumblerful,’ I said.
‘Ah, go on, go on. You can drink it. Here.’ He gave me the glass. ‘Get that down you and come again.’
As I was sipping the sherry he seemed to remember something and after taking a hasty gulp at his whisky he went out of the room, excusing himself with his usual ‘Half a minute, half a minute’. He came back with a cottage loaf in one hand and a piece of red cheese wrapped in grease-proof paper in the other. He laid the cheese and loaf on the bare table.
‘I’m going to have a bite. Eh? What about you? I’m going to have a bite.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Ah go on, go on. I’ll find the bread knife.’
He began foraging about, looking in the table-drawer, in the top cupboard, even among the saucepans on the stove. Finally he opened the bottom doors of the cupboard. An avalanche of empty bottles was let loose and as they rolled over the floor he tried to kick them back, muttering angrily all the time. Disgusted and unable to find the bread knife, he at last produced his shut-knife, a fine knife with a white lamb’s-foot handle, three blades, a hoof-spike and a corkscrew, and began to slice up the bread and cheese, crudely, slashing at the loaf and chopping the cheese as though he hated the food, pushing a wedge of cheese on a doorstep of bread across the table to me at last, muttering with his mouth already full:
‘Get that down you.’ He strained at his bread and cheese, swallowed it, carved a second mouthful and tore at it ravenously. At frequent intervals, as he ate, he remembered his whisky and drank it like water, refilling his tumbler with one hand and gnawing cheese from the other. Taking a gulp of whisky once with his mouth still full of bread and cheese he suddenly choked and was seized by a fit of coughing, retching and hacking away until his face was muddily purple and his eyes bloodshot and full of water. Pulling his handkerchief out of his pocket in order to wipe his eyes he pulled out the letter too. It fell to the floor and I bent down and picked it up for him. Mechanically he wiped it on his breeches.
‘Better see what it says,’ he muttered. ‘Better see what it says.’
He tore open the envelope, took a drink of whisky and read the letter, sucking his wet lips soundlessly all the time.
‘What time’ll you be back – you know, up there?’ he asked me.
‘Evening.’
‘Tell her I’ll come,’ he said. ‘That’ll be all right. Tell her I’ll come. More whisky?’ he inquired, the bottle poised ready.
‘Sherry,’ I said. ‘No thanks.’
‘Think I will.’
After pouring himself the whisky he looked at me with unsteady watery eyes and asked:
‘How d’ye get on up there? All right, eh? All right?’
‘Very nicely.’
‘What about the old man? Old bleeder’s a nuisance. Childish. Time he snuffed it.’ He took a drink, quickly. ‘Know what ruined him? Drink and gambling – turned his mind.’ He paused to eat.
‘Play cards?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Not much.’
‘Pity. Don’t play at all?’ A look of pathetic eagerness came over his face; the corners of his mouth dropped. ‘Might have had a game,’ he said regretfully. ‘Might have had a game.’ He made a final attempt at me: ‘Sure you don’t play? Sure?’
I shook my head and he filled up his glass again, mournfully, and then held out the whisky bottle over mine.
‘No more,’ I said, holding my hand over the glass.
‘Ah, come on! Come on!’ he insisted heavily. He brushed my hand unsteadily aside and proceeded to pour whisky into the sherry, brimming the glass, spilling and slopping the spirits over the table and my half-eaten slice of bread. ‘Come on,’ he kept saying, ‘Come on.’ And suddenly he banged down the bottle on the table and roared tremendously:
‘Let ’em all come!’
He became seized with an extraordinary drunken vitality, waving his arms, standing up, dancing about the table, imploring me to help him stand on the table, swearing at me, shouting at me as though I were miles away, urging me to join in the words of a song which had only one verse but which never ended:
Lift aloft! for I am coming
In a donkey cart,
The wheels are bent,
The shafts are broken
And the donkey wants to –
Lift aloft! for I am coming!
When he grew tired of its ribald monotony he bellowed another:
Rolling round the town
Knocking people down!
And finally, lolling back in his chair, his eyes too thick with tears of drunkenness for him to see me across the table, he bellowed them together:
Lift aloft, for I am coming
Rolling round the town!
In a donkey cart,
Knocking people down!
‘Why don’ you sing?’ he yelled at me.
‘No piano,’ I said.
‘Pianer? Pianer? Who sha’ no pianer? Front room!’ he confided, staggering up. ‘Front room. Beautiful pianer.’
He staggered out of the room into the passage and I heard him kick open a door. There were sudden tinkling discords and his thick voice above the voice of the cracked piano:
‘Can you play? ’Cause I’m damned if I can. Where are you? Damn it, where are you?’
The thin discordant voice of the piano followed me through the farmyard and even up the hillside, dying away at last to leave the hot noon as still as the early morning had been before his voice had yelled at me across the hill. And as I climbed up, skirting the barley-field to reach the sun-scorched grassland of the hilltop at last, the harebells began to follow me again, more and more exquisite as the hill itself grew higher and the earth shallower and more scorched under the August sun.
It was early evening when I came down the hill again, by the road, the light of the dropping sun pouring horizontally across the hills. In the hollow the village was already in shadow, people were drifting up the street to church and in the sultry evening air the parson’s bell sounded sleepy and slower than usual, as though the ringers were tired after the heat of the day.
After I had tapped at the Jeffersons’ door and no one had answered I walked round the house into the garden.
Angela was sitting in a wicker long-chair, half-facing the sunlight, on the highest terrace. She was alone and she was sewing, her head bent deep over the work, but the moment she heard me coming up the terrace steps she lifted her head sharply and her tranquillity vanished. She began to flutter like a bird disturbed on its nest.
So I had got back at last? She had just been wondering about me. But wasn’t I hungry? Couldn’t she get something for me?